Ingo, San Martin, Cuba 1853 - 1866

Charles DeWolf Brownell made this oil painting of Ingo, San Martin, Cuba. The work shows us rural Cuba. Brownell’s composition is dominated by a flat expanse, punctuated only by a scattering of slender royal palms. This painter was part of a fascinating moment in North American art. In the mid-19th century, artists started to travel more widely and to represent a wider range of places and people. Brownell's work is a reminder that landscape painting is never neutral. The scene's tranquility belies the intense political and economic changes that were occurring in Cuba at the time. The sugar plantations, the enslaved labour, and the independence movements, were all part of the social fabric of Cuban society. Understanding such an image requires looking into shipping records, abolitionist pamphlets, and other sources to get a full sense of the complex social world that it only hints at.